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Comment by waterlesscloud | Hacker News Reader

A lot of comments here miss the point.

80% did not respond at all . They did not acknowledge his contact attempt in any way whatsoever. Not a canned response confirming contact, nothing. Nothing.

I'm willing to bet very heavily on this representing complete incompetence at the organizations contacted.

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I think there's an underlying issue here. I would wager that 4/5 of job postings are for internally filled positions, especially with larger enterprises with heavy HR involvement.

Let's say MegaCorp Inc. wants to promote Billy, a great Jr. developer, into a senior role for a new project. The deal is done when the manager says "Billy, I want you to be the Sr. developer for X project." The thing is that HR gets in the way and says "well, we have to make this position available publicly so that we are complying with whatever fair labor and employment laws effect us."

Those 40 companies who didn't respond probably already had a Billy lined up for the job.

Thats a really good point in general. The issue is none of the 50 companies included MegaCorp or the like and based on my experience at startups I'm guessing HR is non-existent at most of them.

Definitely. I did a lot of applying and interviewing when I was first looking for a job out of school, and it's amazing how disorganized some companies are. I will always specifically remember the companies that may have said "no" but were timely and polite, and I'd recommend them to my colleagues. On the other hand I also remember the companies that were rude or disorganized and recommend against them when asked.

Bottom line: Candidates should always like you even if you don't like or need them, especially since you'll likely reject far more people than you hire.

I had a similar experience. The most egregious was a company that got back to me 8 months later. My answer was basically "Um, I got a job now, and why would you want to hire me if I couldn't find a job in 8 months of looking?"

"80% did not respond at all"

This is prob the biggest point. Whats the problem? Even MEGA corp knows about autoreply emails.

When I was looking for a job I got some of those autoreplies, and IMO, they are worth nothing. I already got confirmation that the form (in some giant enterprisey applicant tracking system) was submitted, sending me an email does nothing for me. If you would let me know when a human sees my resume, that would perhaps be meaningful, but there's no way they'd go for that level of transparency.

I love getting auto-replies because a lot of times the application process is to send an e-mail to jobs@example.com. Getting a reply that your resume arrived intact is always reassuring.

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